Wade: No, I don't have a robot answering my email. My robots are
busy preparing for the ... I mean, uh, what robots? I don't have any
robots.

I do have three totally awesome computers now, though (not including my
work laptop). The first one is my Mac mini, which rules, but it's not
the focus of this entry.

Over the past week or so, I'd run into some really odd stability issues
with my AMD64 box. I decided to go to CompUSA and pick up a new
motherboard, since the last issue I had with an AMD64 machine was also
the mobo. Bring the new mobo back home. Remove the old one, move parts
over to new one, hook up power connectors, flip the switch, and ...
nothing.

The damned thing didn't even POST.

Somewhat frustrated, I decided to work on assembling my other new
system. I've had a spare CPU, some extra RAM, and a slew of video cards
laying around for a while now, so the only thing I really needed to pick
up was a new case and a motherboard for this box. It's an "old" AthlonXP
1700+ - I figure it's probably worth me keeping a system around that can
do AGP and run fast enough to prevent me from throwing it out the
window.

The assembly on my new system went pretty well, until the part where I
attempted to attach the power cable. The power supply I was using was a
24-pin, designed for the power requirements of the newer AMD64 systems.
Normally, it wouldn't be too hard to plug in a 24-pin cable into the
20-pin socket on the motherboard, except that the mobo I picked up
happens to have the IDE pins right next to the ATX pins.

And there was much frustration.

I was about to give up, but for some reason I decided to read the manual
for the power supply in the new case that showed up, and if you look at
page 3 in the manual, you should see the picture that made my night.

The other power supply can break off the extra four pins so that I can
use it on the motherboard.

I returned to CompUSA and got a replacement for the busted motherboard,
and brought it home and set it up, and this one actually works, so now
I've got both systems up and running beautifully.

I finally got to meet a few people I hadn't met before, including
aseigo. He's taller than I expected, at least. According to him, I don't
look anything like what he thought I'd look like, but I sound
exactly the way he thought I would. Along with Thomas Zander and
Rainer Endres (and someone else whose name I can't remember) we left at
around 1AM to go find a bar. We asked a couple of locals where a good
place to get a drink would be, and they gave us some directions and told
us to look for the 'Marabu' or something similar. After about thirty
seconds of walking, aseigo was already calling it the 'caribou' and I
had to correct him. Once we arrived in the area that they said it would
be at, there was a building with with a bright neon pink heart sign that
said 'Maribé.'

At this point, before entering, we had a couple of theories. One that we
figured was likely was that the locals had sent us to a gay bar, which
would have amused us. Rainer didn't want to go in, but I ventured in
with aseigo and Thomas and the kid whose name I can't remember; I saw a
bar with alcohol behind it and a bartender, so I went back to the door
and motioned to Rainer that it was ok, it was just a bar, and everything
looked fine.

Rainer took a step in and then decided that he was going to go to the
restaurant next door instead; I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink
since much earlier, so I decided to join Rainer instead of staying with
the other guys. Rainer ordered a beer, and I got a soda. About fifteen
minutes later, aseigo and crew came out to join us and they were
laughing pretty hard.

Apparently, the Maribé is actually a brothel.

I think that even funnier than finding that out (which was pretty funny)
was the fact that aseigo even saw the sign by the stairs that said
'Services' with a man and a woman on it, and he didn't get it until the
woman told him that the price was 20 EUR.

Update: It's worth noting that the Marabu was actually right next
door to the restaurant that Rainer and I decided to go to; aseigo just
couldn't resist the pink neon heart sign.

Well, ok, more accurately, Spanish women are pretty damned cool. I'm
pretty sure I've seen more cleavage since I landed in Madrid than I have
since I moved to Boston.

The trip has been exciting so far. There were two legs on the flight
over - the stopover in Frankfurt was pretty uneventful. I was surprised
by the fact that Lufthansa provided metal utensils for the in-flight
meals; it impressed me, but at the same time, I had a realization. I
shouldn't be impressed by metal silverware; I should be disappointed by
plastic silverware. And on the flight from Frankfurt to Madrid, I was
depressed - I guess the metal silverware is only for the cross-Atlantic
flights. Anyway, once I landed, I wasn't too worried about navigating
the Frankfurt airport; I've been there before (the last time I came to a
KDE conference, actually) and in general, I find airports to be
reasonably simple to navigate, even if you don't speak the language.

The airport in Madrid was also pretty easy; figuring out how to get on
the metro was not too hard, but it took a bit more walking than I
expected it would. Once I was on the subway, I figured out pretty
quickly that 'proxima' is Spanish for 'next' and I was set. The route
that I had planned out actually worked exactly as I hoped it would. I
got off the metro at the right stop for the train station and almost
bought a ticket for the right train on the wrong day. Once I made it to
the train, I figured I was pretty close to safe.

The train arrived exactly when expected, and there were lots of taxis
outside of the train station waiting for us, which was good. The taxi
driver I rode with didn't speak much English and had no idea where the
place I wanted to go happened to be; he got directions from the central
office, though, and somehow I managed to find the student residence
where most of us are staying.

I'm landing in an airport I've never been to, in a country where I don't
speak the native language, and I have to make it from the airport to the
train station (which is not attached to the airport, but is at least two
subway stops away). Once the train arrives at the destination, I still
have to make it from the train station to the place I'm actually
staying, which is of course not exactly close by.

Since I'll be in Spain and my phone won't work there, the best way to
contact me is either IM or email; I won't be getting any voicemails
until September 3 at the earliest.

Adam: I have a tax-free holiday every day of the week; it's called
"Living in New Hampshire."

(There's no sales tax in this state, for the readers out there who are
confused.)

Work on the tdfx EXA support is still ongoing; I have the framebuffer
addresses properly set up now, but my blit and solid fill routines are
completely hosed. At least I have an idea of how things are *supposed*
to work now.

First off, most recently, I started hacking on EXA support for the tdfx
driver - it doesn't do much yet, except for display things wrong and
crash, but hopefully I'm not too far from it working properly.

Second, I finally coerced a graphic designer friend of mine into coming
up with a new layout for my site. It's not live yet, because I'm not
quite happy with it, but it's pretty close to ready (I think) - take a
look and let me know what you think. (Yeah, I know, it's slow.
It's using multiple layers of translucent PNGs, some of which are
position: fixed. I prefer to think of it as "an opportunity for KHTML
optimization.")

Third, I have been hacking on the Qt4 BitTorrent client from
Andreas, and it's really cool. There's a very small, slow memory leak
in it, though, which I have to find and destroy.

Other than that, not too much going on. I'm excited about aKademy - only
a couple of weeks away!

Every time I hear the word 'stroke' from now on, I'm going to hear
keithp purr. That disturbs me to no end.

In other news, the DDC at OLS has been a lot of fun. I'm going to have
to disagree with chouimat about a few things - namely, I think that Xgl
is extremely sexy, and has a hell of a future, and while it's true that
the vast majority of the talks here are GNOME-related or have a GNOME
bias... it's because we are vastly outnumbered on this side of the pond,
and you can count the number of KDE developers at this conference on one
hand.

George Staikos was here for a couple of hours, I've been here for the
DDC but not OLS, chouimat was here (but let's face it, you haven't been
active in KDE lately, chouimat, and neither have I), and Alexander Dymo
is here and gave a talk about KDevelop. We're not exactly taking over
here. We need more of a presence at these shows, people. It's important.

Some asshole thought it would be a good idea to string up yellow
"CAUTION" tape and block one of the one-way roads leading to my
apartment building inside of the complex.

I was not amused.

I stopped my car, pulled up the handbrake, flipped on the emergency
lights, got out, and walked to one side of the tape. I ripped it off,
and some guy screamed out "HEY!!!" I turned to his general direction and
flipped him off, and walked across the street to the other side, where I
pulled down the rest of the tape and tossed it into my car.

Got back into my car and parked in my parking lot without incident,
throwing out the tape on my way in to my apartment.